Darth Maul
Darth Maul was a Zabrak Sith assassin hailing from the planet Dathomir approximately fifty-four years before the Battle of Yavin inside of the Main Universe. As a newborn, he was taken from his home by Darth Sidious to train in the ways of the Sith. Biography Early Life Maul was taken as a child from his homeworld of Dathomir by Darth Sidious to train as an assassin for the Sith, becoming Sidious' apprentice and being marked with Sith Tattoos. His training was relentless and ruthless, as he was bred to be a warrior to help bring about the defeat of the Jedi. In the year 32 BBY, Maul was stationed on Naboo by his master to oversee its invasion by the Trade Federation. Once the invasion was underway, Queen Amidala, who was intended to sign a treaty that would legalize the invasion of her home planet, escaped with the aid of Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi and fled to Tatooine to repair their starship on their way to the Republic capital world, Coruscant. Sidious sent Maul to hunt them down, kill the Jedi and bring Amidala back to Naboo alive so that she could sign the treaty. Once on Tatooine, Maul scouted for his prey, finding out via probe droid the direction that Qui-Gon and the boy, Anakin Skywalker were heading. Before he could get an exact location, Qui-Gon destroyed the probe droid, but the ship that they seemed to be headed toward was that of the Dusty Duck. He did not wait for confirmation that that was where they had been headed and raced toward the ship. Inside, he found a Pa'lowick pilot, who swore up and down that she had no knowledge of the Jedi he sought. Once he realized she was of no use to him, he slaughtered her. He then discovered the location of the ship Qui-Gon had really been headed two, which was a Nubian-class Royal Starship from Naboo's hangar. On his way there, he confronted and dueled Jinn, but Kenobi managed to rescue him before they could finish and they fled to Coruscant. Maul was then called back to Naboo by Sidious. and Obi-Wan Kenobi.]] On Coruscant, Amidala plead her case to the Senate, but she found that she was getting nowhere with the dogmatic bureaucrats and voted that a new Supreme Chancellor be elected in Valorum's place, and then proceeded back to Naboo to deal with this conflict herself. The Jedi did not like her going alone, so they issued Jinn and Kenobi back to her aid. Back on Naboo, Amidala and the Jedi allied with the Gungans and began the Battle of Naboo. During this battle, Maul reengaged his duel with Qui-Gon, this time with Kenobi joining in. Maul managed to mainly distract Kenobi so as to separate the two, making it easier to defeat them. Near a reactor core inside Naboo's capital city, Theed, Maul ran a blade through Jinn, successfully killing the Master and leaving just Kenobi. Kenobi became enraged and was fueled by the power of Gar, which allowed him to defeat Maul, even from the Low Ground. He cut Maul's body in half and sent him falling to his supposed death, where he would not be heard from for more than a decade. .]] Maul, using all of his Dark Side power managed to survive as he landed in a waste disposal, which was then carried off world and sent to the garbage-wridden world of Lotho Minor. There, he used the Force to assemble scrapped pieces of metal into a hulk of spider-like legs, which allowed him to survive and remain mobile. He was forced to hide underground to survive the dreaded Fire-Breathers, and was brought food by an Anacondan named Morley. For the next decade, Maul went insane over an obsession with Kenobi and his need for revenge. The Clone Wars Brothers During the Clone Wars, Mother Talzin sent Maul's brother, Savage Opress in search of the forgotten Sith, knowing that he survived Naboo. He eventually found his brother when Morley attempted to feed him to Maul and then when Maul was finished, he would have the leftovers. For this, Savage killed the snake and took Maul off of the dreadful planet. He brought Maul to Talzin on Dathomir, where she used her magicks to restore his sanity and give him new metallic legs. on Raydonia.]] After his brother gave him a new lightsaber, Maul set his sights on revenge against Kenobi. He and Savage traveled to the world of Raydonia, where they lured a now much older Obi-Wan to them by slaughtering innocent beings. They specified that he should come alone, and that failure to comply with their wishes would result in more innocent blood being spilt. He did as instructed, and was outmatched by his opponents, who took him prisoner aboard their ship. Maul monologued to Kenobi his plans to slowly torture him to death, when a former nightsister and Sith assassin-turned-bounty hunter, Assajj Ventress revealed herself to the brothers with the intent of capturing Savage for a bounty. She freed Kenobi and the two teamed up against them. In their duel, Maul taunted Obi-Wan about having gutted his master as he stood helpless and watched, which caused the Jedi to embrace the Dark Side. Kenobi and Ventress managed to escape, and he returned to the Jedi Temple. The Battle of Florrum .]] Shortly after, Maul and Savage went on a crusade in the Outer Rim territories, robbing outposts for petty cash to survive, and then Maul formulated a plan to invade the pirate-infested world of Florrum, lead by the Weequay, Hondo Ohnaka and rally enough of his men to revolt against Hondo and overthrow him, beginning their own crime organization. Things went awry when the Jedi who had been hunting them down the past few months, Kenobi and Master Adi Gallia came to the aid of the pirates. In their duel, Gallia was killed by Savage, but Kenobi led the Zabraks into the pirate base and cornered them inside. Severely injuring both of them, he cut of one of Savage's arm and one of Maul's cybernetic legs and forced them to flee. The pirates who had betrayed Hondo in favor of Maul soon found themselves at their former leader's mercy, and after they begged for their lives, he allowed them back into his crew and they chased the Sith off of their planet. Hondo Ohnaka watches as Maul's ship is shot down, and the treasures it carried plummet to the surface.]] The two barely escaped with their lives, with the pirates having shot down their ship and forcing them to jettison into space at random. This caused the Republic to believe Maul and Savage were dead, and though Kenobi strongly believed they were not, he was forced by his superiors to give up his search for them and return to the war. Welcome to Death Watch When their pod reached the Mandalorian sector, the two brothers were found by Pre Viszla and his his soldiers, the Death Watch. After they gave Savage a new arm and replaced Maul's legs with a more realistic artificial pair, they introduced themselves and learned that they shared common enemies in both Kenobi, and Count Dooku, who had taken Maul's place as Sidious' apprentice after Maul's supposed death. to join the Shadow Collective.]] They formed an alliance with one another, Maul promising Viszla that he could help the Death Watch reclaim Mandalore and restore it to its warrior ways, as it had been before it was turned into a pacifist society under the rule of Duchess Satine Kryze. In reality, both parties planned to betray one another when Mandalore had been conquered, and both anticipated the other's treachery, but they remained allies for the time. Maul orchestrated the gathering of several crime gangs, the Black Sun, the Pike Syndicate and the Hutt Empire, which were all leading organizations in the Criminal Underworld. Under his leadership the combined gangs would go by the "Shadow Collective", and their forces would easily overtake Mandalore, only for the Death Watch to stop them and be deemed heroes by its people. After some trouble in getting the Hutts to join them, they went to Tatooine and raided Jabba's Palace, forcing Jabba to submit. takes over Mandalore.]] Afterward, they enacted their plan, which went exactly as Maul had designed and Viszla became the new ruler of Mandalore, putting Satine in a cell to await execution. Immediately after, he betrayed Maul and put him and Savage in the prison as well. This allowed Maul to scout the prison for a potential face for his rule, and he found former prime minister Almec, who had been imprisoned for trading in the Black Market. Afterward, Maul challenged Viszla to a duel of singular combat, which he knew the honor-bound Mandalorian would be forced to accept out of tradition. The result of the duel would be that whosoever came out the victor would lead the Death Watch and as such, rule Mandalore. Maul defeated and killed Viszla, becoming ruler and the possessor of the darksaber. Some Mandalorians were not fond of the idea of an outsider ruling them and, led by Bo-Katan Kryze rebelled against Maul, fleeing the scene with haste. After gathering allies, Bo-Katan's rebels attempted to break Satine free of her imprisonment, and though they failed, she was able to get word out to Kenobi, an old friend of hers. Upon receiving this message, Kenobi left to save Satine, being forced to go without the aid of his clonetroopers because Mandalore refused to ally with the Republic, making it a personal matter for Kenobi. In his attempt to rescue her, the ship that he borrowed from his apprentice, Anakin Skywalker was shot down and he was captured and taken to Maul. Recognizing the deep-seeded love that Obi-Wan felt for Satine, he killed her while he was forced to watch, and then imprisoned him below to drown in his misery. Far away on Coruscant, Sidious, disguised as his alter-ego and Supreme Chancellor, Sheev Palpatine, sensed the disturbance taking place on Mandalore and prepared to finally deal with Maul. Upon arrival, he disbanded with Maul's guards without a second thought and made his way to the throne room. Having sensed his old master's coming, Maul knelt before Sidious in submission, hoping to gain his favor and pretend all he had done had been for Sidious. His master did not believe him, and so engaged in a duel with the two Sith. In the duel, Sidous killed Savage, causing an angered Maul to attempt to kill his foe with all of his power. Instead, the Dark Lord defeated him with ease, and after Maul begged for mercy, Sidious sent a barrage of Force-lightning his way. He told Maul that he was not going to kill him, as he had other uses for him, before further proceeding to torture him. While all of this took pllace, Kenobi was freed by Bo-Katan during a battle that officially sparked the Mandalorian Civil War. He then returned to the Republic to explain all that had transpired in hopes that they would bring aid due to the involvement of Maul. War of Chaos It isn't exactly known what became of Maul after being captured by Sidious, other than that he eventually died, and his soul was sent down to Chaos, the underworld to which practitioners of the Dark Side go when they move on from life. It is unknown when he joined the world of the damned, though he would spend the next two thousand years in death before Chaos' ruler, the Dark Underlord waged war on Hell, which had been taken under the control of Jacob Maroni after the defeat of Satan at the hands of Marn Heirogryph. This war became known as the War of Chaos, and all Sith who agreed to aid him were promised allowance to return to life. Many Sith fell in line, including Maul, however it was not enough to defeat Maroni's army of demons and the Dark Underlord called a retreat back into Chaos, where he sealed the door between universes. Maul was among the many Sith who did not make it back through in time and were trapped in Hell, being captured by demons and locked away in what became known as the Sith Prison. wages war on Hell.]]Maul was tortured constantly in this prison for nearly sixty-thousand years by demons before his eventual escape. He crept through the deep caverns until he accidentally discovered a room in which several doors were located. He chose one at random and found himself in a universe he was unfamiliar with. This universe was known as the Earth 616 universe, the year being five B.C., according to the Earth 616 timeline or somewhere around fifty thousand years after the Battle of Yavin. He took the vessel of a man named Theseus. His Own Mortality Maul figured out how to achieve a sense of immortality, but much like the ancient Sith, Darth Sion, every waking moment of his existence became excruciatingly painful. The vessel of Theseus did not last any longer than his mortal life, and even less time, as the power he was using to contain his soul would cause the body to deteriorate faster than it would have otherwise. Maul was able to transfer his essence into any vessel within reach, and he did this for the next few millennia, leading a rather pathetic existence. At some point, he was hunted by a breacher from Earth 19, who wanted Maul dead for having killed a powerful asset of theirs who had gone rogue on Earth 616 and hidden there. During a battle with his foe, the breacher ran him through with a blade, and Maul essence transferred into the breacher's vessel, inheriting his ability to travel between universes. He returned to the main universe, now several thousand years following the Battle of Yavin. He established himself in the abandoned palace on Tatooine that once belonged to Jabba the Hutt, and reactivated a secret army of assassin droids that Jabba had stored for a rainy day. After his breacher's vessel's time was over, he was forced to abandon it in favor of a Rodian, and several more vessels over the next two hundred years, until close to 58,000 BBY, when he was in the form of a human, which was the vessel he was in when he ran into an old friend. Return of Don Brody Maroni When Maul heard that the former Don of the Italian Empire, Brody Maroni had left Earth 616 in favor of becoming a bounty hunter, and was now on Tatooine working a job for Jauulus the Elder, he devised a plan to take hold of his vessel, assuming it would be powerful enough to contain him. return to Earth 616 and destroy Jacob and Ferguson, and take his place as ruler of the greatest Empire in all the multiverse. He hired a bounty hunter named Athena Morrah to capture Brody and bring him back to Jabba's palace. She succeeded in her mission, and his droids met her at her speeder to collect. After he revealed himself to Brody and quickly monologued his plans, he tried to essence transfer into Brody and found himself unable to. Brody explained to him that after he and Jacob were possessed by demons, they decided it best to insure themselves by printing protective tattoos on their shoulders that would ward off any being no matter how powerful from entering. Maul became incensed with rage, but before he could do anything, Athena broke into the palace and rescued Brody in Maul's surprise. The two escaped and fled to Mos Eisley spaceport. Maul and the droids chased them down and engaged in an all-out brawl with the two, during which he surprised Brody by unleashing Force-lightning at him, a power he had only recently mastered. Brody was able to deflect the blast in time, but it kept him on the defensive, and made him weaker and vulnerable. A few of Maul's droids were able to subdue him near to the point of unconsciousness, and then Maul took a blade and sliced the area of skin on which Brody's protective tattoo was drawn. With his defenses down, Brody was unable to prevent Maul from penetrating his vessel and overtaking his conscious mind. Maul left Athena to fight off the rest of his droids, stealing a ship and fleeing the planet. He soon found himself unable to travel between dimensions, as Brody was using what little control he could grab onto to keep him. So Maul trekked to is home planet of Dathomir, which, in the last 58,000 years, had become a metropolitan society and an established world in service of the Outer Rim Powers. He traveled below the polished city to the ancient underground catacombs and met with a cult led by a man named Reeves, enlisting his help in casting Brody from the vessel. The monks performed a ritual on Maul and were all instantly killed by Brody, for he was too powerful for their feeble magicks to comprehend. Maul became increasingly frustrated with his lack of progress, but his tantrum was interrupted by Athena, who found them using a tracking device that she put on Brody's back. The two of them engaged in a fight that Maul would have easily bested her in, had Brody not been restricting him from using his power and forcing him to fight her hand-to-hand. She pinned him to the wall and killed him, which surged Brody with enough energy to overpower Maul and cast him out of the body. A New Beginning Despite being left without a vessel, this was not the end for Maul. His spirit floated between worlds for what was to him, several eons,until one day a universe was fastened into creation right in the empty space that he was in, and as timelines go, it had always existed, as the inhabitants of the Disney Canon universe were amidst a galactic conflict, and Maul's spirit found itself in a somewhat familiar place, as he recognized it as his home of Dathomir, only as it was when he was alive and in his original form. He assumed that it had to be some sort of afterlife, and that he was finally, truly dead, until he was met with the spirit of Mother Talzin, who knew that her son had not yet met his end, as he had just come to the world to visit her, and then departed to Tatooine to finally kill Obi-Wan Kenobi. is slain by Obi-Wan Kenobi (Canon).]] Maul explained to her that there existed a multiverse, a concept which she had always believed to be possible, and he told her how he ended up there. When she asked him what he wished to do now, he told her that he was stronger now, much stronger than the Maul she knew, and that he could finally get vengeance. So he traveled to Tatooine, where he found his doppleganger facing down Kenobi and being killed within seconds. Maul was disgusted as he watched himself die in Kenobi's arms, and even moreso when he watched the vessel that he was going to transfer into be burned on a funeral pyre by Kenobi and buried outside of his home. The other version of Maul saw his doppleganger's spirit, and Maul told him that all things were possible with the Force. The other Maul pleaded with him to teach him how to tether himself to the world of the living as he was transcending into the netherworlds. Maul told him that begging was for the weak and watched as he slowly and painfully deteriorated into nothing. It had been then that Maul realized he was setting his sights too low. This universe's Maul was weak, and so his vessel would have been too, and the Kenobi he knew was already dead He then decided that what he truly wanted was power, and a strong empire to gain just that. Rise to Power Maul felt his spirit becoming weak, and knew that if he did not take another vessel soon, he would pass on from that realm, so he took over the body of a Tusken Raider as far as Mos Eisley Spaceport, where he latched onto a human and used his ship to get off of the planet. He then traveled throughout the galaxy making a trail so that it would be harder to track, until eventually making his way to Coruscant, where he used one of his vessels as a suicide bomber at the Imperial palace, causing an explosion at one of the side entrances that served as a distraction. He floated his spirit through the corridors of the once great temple of the mighty Jedi Order, sailing into the throne room of Emperor Palpatine and possessing him. After the "crisis" of the suicide bombing was over and "Palpatine" gave his speech on the matter, Darth Vader entered his chamber to inform him that Grand Admiral Thrawn had successfully launched a full-scale attack on the Rebel hideout on Attollon, and more details would come as they happened. Maul's reaction had not been what Vader was expecting, though he initially ignored it. Though it did not take long for Vader to realize that something was wrong with his master, and after a few weeks, he confronted him on the matter. Maul then revealed himself to Vader, deciding that he had no need for the facade because Vader could not stop him. He then told Vader that he was going to fall in line because Maul knew where to find Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that if Vader wanted that information shared, he would submit to his wishes. Vader did as he was told, kneeling before his "master", though with ulterior motives that he considered to be secret, yet Maul saw how pathetically predictable Vader was, and his servant did exactly what was expected. Vader hired Boba Fett to investigate the chain that Maul left, starting with the suicide bombing in hopes that it would lead back to Kenobi. Maul, in turn, hired a bounty hunter of his own, Embo. He sent Embo to Tatooine to kidnap Obi-Wan, which the hunter was successful in, and in almost no time, Boba was able to trace Maul's steps back to Kenobi's hut, though he determined that it had been abandoned and reported his findings to Vader. Vader was not entirely convinced, though regardless, he knew that he would not find Kenobi on Tatooine. Obi-Wan managed to escape Embo, though he elected to hide on Nar Shaddaa rather than returning home, figuring he needed to wait until that trail was cold, lest Vader find him. Embo pursued him there, eventually capturing him again and taking him prisoner in an abandoned building. He contacted Maul and informed him of the situation, and Maul told him to remain where he was, and that he was coming. Maul traveled alone to Nar Shaddaa, being followed by Vader. Maul revealed his true identity to Obi-Wan, and told him that he had no current intention to kill him, so he was safe for the time being. The monologue, however, was cut short by Vader knocking Embo unconscious and freeing Obi-Wan. Vader was forced to team up with his greatest nemesis in order to defeat Maul, and Maul found that he was not strong enough to battle them both while also keeping Palpatine at bay. Eventually, it became too much for him to handle, and Palpatine cast him out of the vessel in a small explosion that sent the three parties unconscious. Maul's spirit was drained of its energy, and he found himself too weak to enter the vessel of even a weak being. He realized that his time was finally up, and that he would now pass on. He watched Obi-Wan be the first to awaken, contemplating killing both Palpatine and Vader, but being forced to flee after being shot at by stormtroopers. Maul the felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see the spirit of Qui-Gon Jinn, who told him that it was time to go, and Maul accepted his fate.